Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

[Nonsense, it was a reasonable suspicion and I actually found a number of useful details by trawling through her mind. Not only is her family not at all friendly towards the invaders, they are likely to be quite annoyed about their plans. Cyoria is their powerbase and they don’t want it ruined. And since Novelty is back there, charming the young Aope heir, we will have an easy way to get in contact with the Head of House. Getting such a prominent Noble House on our side will guarantee that the evidence of an invasion plot is taken seriously. Have you spoken to the priest?]

«Yes,» Zorian confirmed. «He said the church would send someone to look into it.»

[Yet another proof of our legitimacy,] the matriarch stated with satisfaction.

«Hopefully I won’t get pulled in for questioning,» Zorian said. «I don’t think my half-truths and understatements could stand up to professional investigators.»

[My web is trying to divert any ongoing investigations away from you, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem,] the matriarch said. [We’ve already ambushed and killed three different investigation groups by the Cult of the Dragon Below, and we’ve been subtly redirecting official Cyorian investigations towards us.]

«You?» asked Zorian in surprise.

[It has been decided to turn this restart into something of a testing run,] the matriarch explained. [As I’ve told you before, my web’s goal is to eventually reveal ourselves to the city at large and join the population as rightful citizens. While full disclosure would be too disruptive for what we’re currently trying to achieve in this restart, we’ve decided to reveal ourselves to a number of prominent people in Cyoria during this restart — both to coordinate the response to the invasion better and to sound out their reaction.]

«And?» asked Zorian, honestly curious.

[It’s a mixed reaction, and the fact we’re bringing news of an impending invasion doesn’t help calm people down. We’ve overheard several ‘secret’ meetings that discussed how to deal with us in a hostile manner, thankfully with the conclusion that they should wait until after the summer festival before doing anything, but also a couple of meetings that discuss how to profit from our presence.]

«Which you have no problems with,» Zorian surmised.

[Nobody wants to kill the goose that laid golden eggs,] the matriarch said. [No offense to your kind, but I trust your greed more than I trust your compassion. I talked to Zach about that issue you wanted to talk about, by the way. You were right. He doesn’t remember any restarts being cut short for any reason whatsoever — you dying doesn’t seem to reset the time loop.]

«I knew it,» Zorian said. «Even Zach would have realized something was wrong if he kept restarting every time I was killed before he was. This is more proof that Zach is the anchor of the loop.»

Zorian had at one point toyed with the idea that there was an actual mind behind the time loop — a god that decided to break the Silence, perhaps, or some kind of very powerful spirit. However, there were a lot of little ways in which the situation matched better with the idea of the time loop being a spell of some sort and none was so clear as the way the spell was treating time traveler detection. Clearly, on some level, the spell knew it was Zach who was the anchor of the time loop and that everyone else was a tagalong. However, at the same time, it could get easily confused (via a little soul blending) into including multiple people into the awareness of the loop. That sounded more like a dumb spell function trying to reconcile incompatible directives with each other than a willful, intelligent mind making a judgment call.

The trouble was, a spell implied a human caster. And a human caster shouldn’t be able to roll back time once, much less repeatedly.

[If we managed to provoke the third time traveler into revealing themselves, most of the questions about the time loop should be answered easily enough,] the matriarch noted. [I suspect they know what the time loop is and how it functions.]

«Yeah,» agreed Zorian. «Let’s hope so.»

Days passed. When Zorian was not attending to one of his numerous obligations (he’d never try to do so many things at once in the future!) he alternated between creating the various traps and items needed for the ambush of the third time traveler and helping the aranea root out the cranium rats from the city.